


issues of our disgrace

by hesperia



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesperia/pseuds/hesperia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He arrives late on Friday, with a bottle of her favorite cabernet sauvignon and that smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	issues of our disgrace

[...night had fallen soft and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and women.] - John Galworthy, _The Forsyte Saga_.

+

_and we ignored our others' happy plans  
for that delicate look upon your face  
our bodies moved and hardened  
hurting parts of your garden  
with no room for a pardon  
in a place where no one knows what we have done_

+

He does not want homemade cookies and Saturdays in the park – he has that already, he doesn’t need that from her.

What he needs are late nights in bed, their thighs sticky between each other, half burnt cigarettes stubbed out in a wineglass next to the lamp.

He wants to spend the entire Saturday reading Else Lasker-Schüler’s Styx, and the only reason they stop is to fuck on her couch, Mélanie’s legs thrown over his arms, her bottom banging against his thighs with each thrust.

So she gives him that.

Because they’ll never be the kind of people who have those things. Holed up in her apartment in Paris, reading and fucking and drinking, that’s what they are, and it’s better than not being anything.

+

He doesn't know it, but Daniel is the first witness.

They are on set, but not on camera, taking a few free moments to share a cigarette before being called into the shot. It's been crazy, and Quentin's screaming for more light, or less light, or possibly both.

"She is quite pretty," August says in hushed German, tapping the ash from the cigarette. "You think so?" His costume is heavy and hot, and it itches around the collar. He can't imagine having to wear one everyday.

Daniel frowns, trying to follow August line of sight. "You mean Mélanie? Yes, quite beautiful."

"You suppose she is single?"

Daniel laughs and takes the cigarette from August, inhaling a quick puff. "Would that stop you?" He finishes it, stomping the butt out with the toe of his 1940s loafer.

"It might," August lies.

+

“It is complicated,” Mélanie tells Diane one day over dinner.

“Isn’t it always?” Diane asks, because she’s got her own set of complications, and Mélanie knows this too.

Mélanie finishes her glass of wine, wiping the final drop off her bottom lip. “I think one day, I will tire of it; I will want more, from him, from me. It is sad, I think he has no more to give.”

"You could end it." Diane squeezes her hand, ignores the vibration of her phone in her purse, and knows nothing is ever that black and white.

Mélanie shakes her head, sighs. "I know there is more to our story, I cannot let it end here."

+

“I have never done this,” she says, when she lets him to her apartment for the first time. “I am not this kind of woman.”

August kisses her, back against the fridge. “I wouldn’t ask you to be,” he replies, his tongue wet and warm in her mouth. “I am not this kind of husband.”

He does not say man, but Mélanie decides it is a meaning lost in translation instead of something more significant.

+

It is a weekend like every other; he arrives late on Friday, with a bottle of her favorite Cabernet Sauvignon and that smile.

She puts her conversation with Diane out of her head, drinks the wine until it makes her giddy and forgetful.

Even in the winter her apartment is sweltering, and the sweat from his neck drips down between her breasts as he moves above her, awkwardly at moments, vision and accuracy skewed from the wine.

His fingers twist her nipples between them, the rosy flesh taught against his mouth as he dips his head, licks over her nipple with the flat of his tongue. She is not the most vocal women he's been with, but she makes these delicious little noises in the back of her throat, almost as though she were mewling like a stray kitten. It drives him crazy.

Afterwards, she lies with her head on his chest, feeling swollen and full of him. He strokes her hair, twirls the strands between his fingers as he finishes his wine.

“I like these moments,” she says, looking up at him.

“Me as well,” he replies, he kisses the back of her hand, the top of her wrist, holds it against his mouth and nose, drinking her in.

+

“There might be a baby,” she says, when she refuses the wine Diane offers. They do this often, dinner and drinks. Though sometimes it feels as thought they are the two loneliest women in Paris.

“Damien’s?” Diane asks, pours herself the wine Mélanie doesn’t drink.

Mélanie laughs bitterly, and looks at Diane over the top of her sunglasses. “Life is never quite so simple.”

“We should have slept together instead, maybe,” Diane says.

+

The red carpet is long and tiring, one photographer after another calling out to her. “Mélanie! Ici! Ici! Mélanie Over Here!” She smiles and waves, blows kisses to cameras with long lens, leans into Christoph’s arm as they share a picture and a laugh.

Just inside the theater she sees August, and he is grinning, grinning so wide that she smiles because of it. “Why so happy?” she asks, her hand on his arm, they are still just colleagues then.

“Julia has had a girl!” he says, and Daniel has an arm around him, clapping him on the chest. “I have a baby girl.”

Mélanie squeezes his shoulders when she leans in to congratulate him on this new step into fatherhood. “Magnifique,” she says with smile, her lips brushing over his cheek.

She will not remember this moment as being magnificent.

+

"Do you ever get tired of making German movies?" she asks one night, when he is visiting for the weekend.

"You mean, do I ever get tired of playing Nazis?"

Mélanie clicks her tongue in annoyance. He knows perfectly well that is not what she meant. "I just mean, do you ever wish you had more English roles?"

August shrugs, sips his wine out of a ceramic mug because they had been too lazy to washes the glasses sitting in the sink from the night before. "My English needs work,"

"So does your French!" she teases with a laugh, falling down onto the mattress, causing him to curse when the wine sloshes, purple dots on the white sheet. Her mouth is over his, her tongue running over his teeth, the deepest corners of his mouth, with the tart taste of Cabernet between them.

+

  
As it turns out, there was a baby, but not any more.

Mélanie stands in front of the mirror in her bathroom, tries to imagine what she would have looked liked in eight months. She had never pictured herself pregnant, not that she has never pictured herself as a mother, but this in-between stage; it never seemed to occur to her.

Diane and Marion visit, together because they have become friends despite the history between them. They bring wine, and food. "You'll get through it," they say, "It's easier to heal than you think."

Crawling into bed with Mélanie, Diane rubs her back, and Marion pours more wine. They watch an ancient version of Hamlet on the BBC.

"I should not be so relieved," says Mélanie later on, as she looks between her two friends.

+

"Aren't you married?" Mélanie asks. It's late, and there is a party of some kind, with too much alcohol, and maybe coke, and its all just a bit hazy. He's got his finger on her lips, shushing her, but she's not so easily swayed and she pushes his hand away, cocks her head to the side in question.

"Yes," he says finally, and it comes out harsher than expected. His face softens in the next moment, his hand squeeze her upper arm. "I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, takes another sip of her wine. "What are you doing?" Though what she really means is, _what are we doing?_

"You tell me."

Mélanie cautiously reaches out, runs her fingers along his forehead, down over the bridge of his nose and eyelids, along the hollows of his cheeks until her fingers rest over his partially opened mouth.

"Just think, before you do something you will regret," she says, but they both know he's already made up his mind.


End file.
